Holden man completes 100-mile race

Christopher Agbay, at his family’s bakery, “Wicked Good Cookies,” successfully completed a grueling 100 mile race in Virginia.
Credit: Patricia Roy “Grit, endurance and a temporary loss of sanity,” is how the Grindstone 100 bills itself. It’s a 100-mile road race/ endurance event that winds over the trails of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Holden resident Christopher Agbay can attest that it’s anything but a day in the country.

The race is considered the most difficult on the eastern seaboard, as runners deal with a topography that gains and loses 24,000 feet in elevation over the course. Any enjoyment of the mountain scenery is done in passing. The race is completed all at once – no nights in a homey bed and breakfast to rest, recharge or soak your feet.

“There’s no sleeping. I took a 10-minute nap when I got so tired that I was staggering,” he admits.

It was the sight of a foliage-rich bush that tempted Agbay to crash for a few.

“It’s nature’s bed. I thought that looks like a great place to take a nap and I just turned my headlamp off and threw myself into it for 15 minutes,” he said.

There were 185 runners who entered the race, but just 108 finished. Agbay completed the course in 33 hours and 11 minutes, about 16 hours behind the first place finisher. He thinks that besides his physical training, his mental preparation helped.

A runner has to be prepared for the lack of sleep, he says. The rest is listening to your body.

“Walk a little slower, drink water, have chicken soup at the aid stations,” he recommends.

The stations along the trail also offered a change of socks and a slather of Vaseline for tired, blistered feet.

Also on his mind was an indirect challenge from one of the top runners.

“He said, ‘You’re not gonna’ finish. Don’t be disappointed,’” Agbay relates. “Every time I thought about quitting, that voice went through my head.”

There was a personal moment of triumph when Agbay met the advicegiving runner at the finish line breakfast the next morning.

Agbay also got support from his brother Peter, and a friend who joined him on the last leg of the course, to help keep up his morale as well as his pace. Getting ready

The training regimen for Agbay is intense. He runs 12-15 miles daily and usually takes Saturdays off. On Sunday, he’ll run hills for hours, usually up and down Wachusett Mt. He refers to this part as “light training.”

Agbay is married to Denise, a Zumba instructor who likes the occasional road race. They have two children, sevenyear old Emma and Theo, who is three.

It was for Emma’s sake that Agbay became passionate about running.

“We bought her a Barbie car for her fourth birthday and she wanted me to chase her around and I couldn’t do it. I felt like I was robbing her of her childhood,” he confesses.

Agbay estimated he weighed about 275 at the time, and started his roadwork very slowly on the Rail Trail. He marked out a particular tree as his goal and attempted to run to it.

“I’d collapse and I’d try it again,” he said.

Eventually he was able to run a half mile, and began to enter races – first a 5 K and then a 10 K. It was the training schedule that got him and his English bulldog into trim.

“He added about 25 pounds of muscle,” Agabay says.

An early riser, Agbay starts his day about 3:15 a.m. He is the first to admit that it’s not always easy.

“I might not want to go, but inside a mile I’m always glad I did. I never got home and said, ‘I wish I didn’t do that,’” he says.

He loves the serenity of running at Trout Brook Reservation in Holden, in the quiet hours before dawn, hearing the soft brush of leaves or twigs snapping under his feet. He cherishes being alone with his thoughts and prayers, he says.

Agbay is taking some time off before he begins training for the Stonecat 50 in Ipswich in the next few weeks and hopes to compete at the Hard Rock 100 in Colorado, the toughest course in the country.

In the meantime, you’ll find Agbay at his family’s bakery, “Wicked Good Cookies” in Boylston that specializes in edible imaging – pictures as good to eat as they are to look at – on its products.

Watching as Agbay transfers sheet pans filled with dozens of tempting cookies from oven to tray rack, it’s not hard to believe that if he can fight his way into shape, anyone can.